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Finally, I managed to persuade myself just to go with my new header, or my new blog in general. I have been wanting to start a baking blog (with the occasional dinner/lunch) for quite a while. Let me introduce myself first, before I start talking too much about other things. My name is Julia. I am nineteen years old and a student in Sydney, where I moved about a year ago. I grew up in Amsterdam, but decided to do my degree somewhere else. So here I am, in Sydney. I am studying Design (just started my second year) and have a passion for Graphic Design so I hope to get into that field later on. That is also why I spend quite a lot of time making a header, or making several ones, because I like to do things like that. But studying can be quite stressful (especially if you know me haha), so I like to bake things from time to time to relax. Muffins, cakes, pies, tarts, macaroons (never done those…so maybe soon?), and lots more! I am always changing recipes I use, so I would like to have a way of remembering my changes besides having a way to share my love for baking and my recipes so that you can enjoy these bakes as well! I often aim for a bit healthier options, but that doesn’t mean that they should taste horrible (or that I won’t make ‘not-so-healthy-things’ every now and then). I am also a vegetarian, just so you know, not that it influences bakes much. Photography is another thing I enjoy doing, so I figured by doing a blog I can experiment a bit with that as well! Oh well, what else can I tell you about me? I just got back from a big trip to Canada, Amsterdam and the UK to visit family and (family) friends, which was very nice!

Enough about me for now, maybe later more, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

So for my first bake, I decided to make something with sweet potatoes. I had a lot spare, and figured that it would probably work in a muffin, just like pumpkin is sometimes used. And it did! I looked up a recipe for pumpkin muffins and took these ‘Whole Wheat Pumpkin Oat Muffins‘ by Karen Troughton. Instead of the pumpkin, I cooked some sweet potato and made it into a puree (you can either do this by hand or with a food processor, and you can add some water to make it a little smoother). I also reduced the amount of sugar a bit, and only used brown sugar. And, since I have a love for cinnamon (a reason for my blog name), I increased the amount of cinnamon. It was still experimenting, but the muffins turned out to be quite moist, flavoursome and not too sweet (which I like, but you can increase the amount of sugar if you rather have them a bit sweeter). Well not much more to say than just to give you the recipe 🙂 Enjoy!

Sweet Potato Muffins

Makes 12 muffins

1 cup sweet potato puree

(a bit less than) 3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 cup buttermilk*

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup rolled oats + 2 tablespoons for topping

2 heaped teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

2 heaped teaspoon ground cinnamon**

½ teaspoon ground ginger

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 170C. Grease a 12-muffin-tin or line the tins with muffin paper cups.

Combine the sweet potato with the brown sugar in a large bowl and whisk until well mixed. Add in the egg, whisk, add the buttermilk and whisk until combined.

Divide the batter among the 12 muffins and sprinkle the tops with the 2 tablespoons of oats. Bake for 20 – 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. (I recommend checking after 10 – 15 minutes, and going from there, but my oven is quite unpredictable and temperamental)

When the muffins are done, let them rest for 10 minutes in the tins before taking them out. They are very nice warm, but can definitely also be eaten cold!

*Buttermilk can be replaced very easily by stirring 1 tablespoon of lemon or white wine vinegar into 1 cup of milk (can be plant-based milk as well) and letting it sit for 10 minutes.